News Roundup
Got the new Powerbook at 9:30 AM this morning and just put it on the bed and watched it for a while. I wanted to enjoy its virgin aura a bit before I violated it.
Apple continues to surprise and delight in the advancement of the little things it does. I finally fired it up and it asked if I wanted to transfer all the stuff from my old computer so I didn't have to fill in all the stuff by hand. Sure, why not? And I stretched the firewire between them and watched as it sucked the life force from the dirty white iBook.
I was worried about reloading my new Photoshop CS, but I needn't have worried as the 17 incher blasted to life. It's Microsoft that proved to be the bad apple. It seems that if I'm on a network it won't let me have two copies of Word without another license. They suck. I removed the 'test drive' for Office 2004 from the drive. Good riddance.
I went to the Apple store to pick up a case for it as I remembered they had some pretty cool ones the last time I was there. They had squat, and I wound up buying an iSight instead. And a La Cie 500 gig drive. And a firewire hub. And a keyboard. And one of those big trackball things. And finally Systemworks. I mean finally because I've been meaning to do it for three years and I really need to clean up this hard drive and check for bugs and stuff. I also got a .mac account as the guy said I could back up my stuff there, but I still don't know how I can restore my system if I lose a drive. I think they were pulling my leg, but we'll see.
It's now over twelve hours later and I'm taking a break. I've got nine tabs open in Safari to see what I've missed today. "The world is a very dark and sinister place" according to Gus van Sant in a Reuters dispatch from Cannes where it's still bash America week at the movies.
There's an interview with one of the Pajamas Media guys on Right Wing News. Pajamas Media is the joint what which is going to make me rich and famous with oodles of ad revenue and links galore. The 'guy' is Marc Danziger who is doing the business end of things and he sounds like someone who at least thinks he knows what he's doing. Good for all that.
There's an excellent short essay about Journalists and their view of their purpose at Unconventional Wisdom. It involves a panel discussion and a hypothetical circumstance that a couple of famous journalists may find themselves in. It's a great adjunct to the Newsweek debacle that I mentioned this morning. Mike Wallace, and ultimately Peter Jennings, state that they would rather film a group of American soldiers get gunned down for the sake of a story rather than warn them of an ambush.
I remember way back when bitching about the Russians being involved in the joint space program as they siphoned off funds and built stuff the way they felt like instead of building it so it hooked up with our stuff. I didn't blame them but our own guys that let them get away with it in the name of playing nice with the new Ruskies trying to salvage some dignity after the demise of the USSR. Today a payoff for my bitchiness as a Russian made oxygen generator failed and the fellas floating about have about 140 days to get spare parts and fix it. Good luck.
More on the Russians from Jed Babbin in the American Spectator as we delve a little deeper into the Oil For Food scandal. Verifying what anybody with a brain wave knew, he details a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report implicating the former red menace.
Sleep tight kids, the world is still a wonderful, wacky and dangerous place.
